Intelligent Design
by fiesa
Summary: This is a conversation that never took place. OneShot- Alec, Kiera.


**Intelligent Design**

_Summary: This is a conversation that never took place. OneShot- Alec, Kiera. _

_Warning: Plot-less. Dialogue. Fractured._

_Set: During Season 2 Episode 2 - Split Second._

_Disclaimer: Standards apply. _

* * *

_This is a conversation that never took place. _

The room was dark. It was a shocking contrast to Kellog's yacht, all sleek and polished and expensive. This was a student's room in a student shack that called itself a house, a desk and a computer in a room that might have become, at one point or another, a home. Only that it never would be one. The room was bare, despite his personal belongings. The wallpaper was coming down in one corner, Alec had fixed it by pushing a pile of stuff (clothes, probably, and an old bag) against it. _Out of sight, out of mind._ The striped quilt on his bed was the one his Mom had made when she was pregnant with him. Alec had taken it, on a whim, when he had left the ranch. It seemed _wrong_ in this place, this place that wasn't a home and shouldn't remind him of his. The entire room seemed wrong, like someone had started to make it inhabitable and then just given up. The room was unfinished, and so was he.

It was fitting, he thought.

"Alec."

Kiera's voice was clear in his head. It carried the tone he had learned to read as worry. Strange how he could read her so easily. She was a conundrum. Something that wasn't supposed to happen, especially not to _him._ Kiera was a stranger with the life of another future. A woman with eyes that constantly sought what hadn't happened yet. If it wasn't so painful, he'd laugh. He knew her better than he knew himself – how ironic, how terribly, _terribly_ ironic. Alec Sadler didn't even know who he was but he knew who he'd grow up to be, and it scared him to hell.

_The arrogance- _

He could just tear off the headset; pepper it into the corner with the heap of knick-knacks and the already faded and moldy wallpaper. Maybe it would break. But she'd just call his cell, then.

_(He can't blame her. He'd done the same already, only now he isn't sure it was the right thing to do.)_

"Alec, I know you're there."

Curse her. She couldn't have known he was listening. She was taking a guess, as usual, and as usual, he caved.

"Yeah."

"Alec, we have to talk eventually."

"Do we? Until then, I'll keep my head low and hope you'll just go away."

Silence. Then: "You want me to just go away?"

_Yes. No. Yes._

"What do you want?"

"I want you to talk to me. You can't continue hiding."

"It did work out so far."

"You went to see Kellog."

She was bluffing again. Or was she? No, this time she wasn't. She knew – and for some reason he couldn't fathom he _knew_ she knew. Maybe that was the problem, and the entire tragic of this story.

_(Years later he would wonder about this. How could he ever have thought he knew the woman that was Kiera Cameron? He hadn't known her at all.) _

"So what if I did."

Kiera was silent for a while. Alec glanced at his second screen – he had to install a second one, it was unbearable to _not_ be able to- he crushed the thought. The images from her CMR flickered over the screen, too fast to see them clearly. Her system was amazing: scanning, reading and analyzing an amount of data per second that was incredible. Human beings – human brains – actually were able to do a similar thing. Only Kiera was able to save the data, recall scenes at will and analyze them. Efficiency at its best. In the beginning, it had scared Alec, and then it had fascinated him. Now he was scared again.

"Did you ask him how your future self would be?"

In response, he huffed.

"Kellog told you nothing," she deduced.

Alec huffed again. "He did tell me _something. _Didn't seem like I was the nicest guy on earth. Actually, it seems like my future self is an ass."

The blue glow from the screen was the only thing that lit the room. Shadows and edges, and Alec, in its middle.

"The Corporations took over the Government, right? And they started controlling the people. It was only possible because of the stuff I developed, right? And I will be, according to Kellog, _Zuckerberg, Jobs and Gates_ all-in-one. Filthy rich and filthy nasty. Great prospects. And you're asking why I don't want to do this stuff anymore."

"Your tech isn't what is good and bad, Alec. It is the way it is used that defines whether it is a success or a failure."

"_Thank you_, Agent Cameron, for your insight." He didn't care whether he sounded bitchy or not. "I end up an ass that rules the world with my technology, a world that has no worth since freedom is not in its dictionaries anymore. Everything I do today helps create the world Liber8 is trying to prevent. Tell me why I shouldn't just side with them."

"Because that's not the way you are."

She sounded so sure. Alec clenched his teeth and pressed his eyes shut.

"So tell me, _who am I?_ And who will I be? The man who destroys lives, or the man who saves them?"

"Don't you understand, Alec?"

The images on his screen stopped as she focused on one thing only. The screen flickered and then zoomed in. The night skyline of Vancouver. Frozen, he stared at it.

"It doesn't matter what you are going to be in the future. It doesn't matter whether you'll be the CEO of SadTech, ruthlessly manipulating your way through the lives of people that are too happy to be fed and clothed and given work that they forget their right to make their own decisions. Or a poor genius with nothing but a few clothes and possessions living under the bridge but ultimately living a happy life because he prevented a war from happening. _The future doesn't matter_, Alec, don't you understand?"

"How can you say that?" He demanded. "You are from the future. You want to protect it, you want to get back your son and husband. You want everything to happen the way it already did, so you can go back and be happy. Of _course_ it matters what I am going to be."

"You're right," she said. "The future is important to me. Very much so. And still. It doesn't matter to _you_ because whatever you _could_ be, Alec – it's not important. Important is what you _are right now_, and _what you choose to be._"

"Yeah," he returned bitterly. "I'll do what I can to change my future and it will turn out exactly the way it already happened once. It's a setup no matter how you look at it. It just reeks of Intelligent Design and I hate that kind of stuff. My future me is setting everything up, isn't he? That's the person I'm going to be – a ruthless, manipulating bastard – no matter how hard I try to prevent it. I can't change _anything_. Don't you know the rule of time travel movies? Ever watched _Terminator_?"

"Can't say I have. Maybe you just have to do something instead of thinking about it, Alec."

"That's easy for you to say. Either way, here's something you ought to have heard already: _The path to hell is paved with good intentions."_

"I actually do know that proverb." Kiera sounded like she was smiling.

Alec frowned, torn between raging at her forced lightness and loving her for trying to cheer him up. "So stupid, age-old advice still is around in 2077. I'm relieved."

"I know it because you were the one who quoted it to me."

He didn't know how to answer to that.

Kiera sighed. The frozen image of his city seemed to breathe, flickering like living organisms. Letting himself fall backwards, Alec flopped down on his bed and stared at the dark ceiling. He could see the lights imprinted onto the back of his eyelids when he blinked.

"Alec." Kiera's voice was far, far away. He imagined her standing right next to him. "Running away is useless. You have to _try._ How will you know what you could have achieved otherwise?"

"Yes, how?" He whispered to himself. "Do you know what you're asking of me?"

_I might never get to know you._

There was logic in it, somewhere. He just couldn't see it right now. Maybe he simply was too tired. It sure had been one hell of a day.

"Alec?" Kiera's voice over the headset was so close. He resisted the urge to reach out to touch her, knowing she wasn't anywhere near. "Alec. Promise me you'll try."

He couldn't think straight anymore. Either he tried, and everything turned out to happen just as it had already, or he might be able to change something. Or he didn't and _still_ everything would be the same, or it would be exactly what would be needed for a change. A future without Alec Sadler in it. His muddy mind came up with the calculations – statistics, variables – and he almost laughed out loud. Seemed like he was screwed, one way or another.

"It's enough for one day." He almost missed the irony in returning her own words back to her. "Good Night, Kiera."

She knew not to ask more of him. "Good Night, Alec."

The headset clattered when he dropped it to the floor. Maybe he'd step on it in the morning. The thought made him smile. _So much for a predictable future, right?_

He imagined Kiera making her way back to her small hotel room, her eyes reflecting the lights of the night city.

_The only thing that is important is who you are right now, and who you choose to be._

He'd try, he promised himself. Tomorrow. The two screens on his desk lit the room in a steady blue. When the images from Kiera's CMR changed – now slower, like she was tired, too – the light flickered, casting shadows left and right. In the darkness he could almost imagine he was at home, in the barn, and his mother would text him to join Julian, Roland and her for dinner. Maybe he could even invite Kiera once. Maybe she'd see him as a friend, then, too.

He didn't remember what he had been dreaming when he woke up the next day.

_This is a conversation that never took place. _


End file.
